


But We Keep Coming Back

by inkgel



Category: Wicked - Schwartz/Holzman
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Musical-verse, Pining, That's right, all of them - Freeform, guess who's doing it, midnight visits, not that the comfort does any good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-05-31 17:43:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19430935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkgel/pseuds/inkgel
Summary: "It’s just as she left it. A few modest books on her shelf next to her suitcase. A single pair of well-worn boots by her bed. Her sheets are the ones provided by the university, pristine and unwrinkled. Something about how little her disappearance seems to have mattered strikes a chord with him.Familiarity stings, and the feeling of emptiness in his chest grows just a bit more."Fiyero and Glinda cope during the in-between years.





	But We Keep Coming Back

“What? What did you say?”

“She’s gone,” is the reply, choked out and drowned in sobs the moment the words leave her lips. Galinda- no, it’s Glinda now- wipes furiously at her face with her hands, smearing lip gloss and eyeliner, a golden thread of perfect hair falling into her mouth. She’s disheveled like he’s never seen her before, he’d think, if he hadn’t heard what she’d said just a moment ago.

“She’s gone,” Fiyero repeats dumbly, and what the hell is he going to do about it?

•••

It’s been a week, and he still doesn’t know.

He’s heard of the Wicked Witch through the grapevine, heard that Elphaba was evil all along, that Shiz was right to distrust her. He hears all the playground rumors, whispered and passed down, and he plasters a smile on his face and laughs. Says that he knew it from the start. Walks through the courtyard and sits on the statue, leans his head on its feet and watches the students milling around, noses in their books, fully believing the lie that they’re all now living. When he finds the energy, he looks at his papers, the linguification work that he can hardly get done because he spends so much time thinking- and he truly is thinking now- about what to do. What to say. How to act, how to feel. What if his smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes? Will they take him away? Have him arrested, executed? And what about Elphaba? 

Some nights, Glinda grabs him by the arm, whisks him off to some ballroom a city away, and throws drink after drink into his hands, hoping that maybe the mindless dancing and pounding music will help them heal. Maybe, just maybe, if the neon lights burn themselves into their eyes, they’ll both forget her.

And oh, how Glinda forgets.

She lets go of her so fast that Fiyero can hardly believe it. Not even a day after she makes her triumphant return from the center and her gossamer hair is perfectly curled, her eyelashes flutter when she turns to smile at him, blowing a kiss with her soft, glossy lips, her arm hooked around Pfanee’s waist, giggling about the things that she saw in the bustling crowds of the Emerald City. She laughs a little too loud when her friend makes a snide remark about the Witch. 

Fiyero knows why.

•••

It’s been nearly a month since she’s vanished, and sleeping in his room feels wrong.

Not that he’s been sneaking off to sleep in the rooms of other students recently, no, he’s been too busy poring over his notes. With not much else to distract himself, the parties and the nightlife linger at the corner of his eye, nothing more than empty desires. What he’s learned is that, if he studies and, Oz willing, gets recognized for his work, he can work under The Wizard himself. Then maybe he’ll be able to do something about the Witch.

(Elphaba was right, he thinks. If he really was shallow as he says, maybe he’d be happier.)

So no, he hasn’t been sleeping anywhere other than his room, but as he sits at his desk, the walls seem tighter, like it’s harder to breathe. His roommate’s left for a weekend to visit family further East, so, now more than ever, he’s alone. For that reason, he lights a lamp and wanders his way up to the private suite at the top of the housing tower across from his, rules and curses be damned. 

•••

The courtyard is quiet at night, he thinks. The party is elsewhere. The students are gone. The grass is unbothered by spit-shined boots and the statue stands steadfast, waiting for an unruly suitor to grab it by the cane. Fiyero wishes he was dancing, but, unfortunately, he has somewhere to be.

•••

He raps on the door once, a loud, harsh noise, waits a moment, and raps again, thrice this time.

“Oh, for the love of Oz!” is what he hears on the other side, frantic and rough with half-sleep. Something hits the floor with a clatter. “It’s dreadfully late! If you’ve got any problems, leave them on my doorstep so I can get to them later!”

A pause, the shuffling of bedsheets.

“... Please,” she adds as an afterthought, the sugary sweetness leaking back into her voice.

“It’s Fiyero,” he says. For whatever reason, he’s terribly nervous to see her, like a child with a wilted poppy in his hand, a fairground proposal. 

When the door opens, Glinda looks smaller than she ever has. She’s hunched over, frail. If he breathes too hard, she’ll shatter. Her cheeks lack luster and her eyes look heavy. Her hair hangs loosely by her shoulders, tight curls falling limp. Still, when she looks to him and finds him waiting at her door, her face lights up. She stands just a little straighter.

“Fiyero? What are you doing here?”

“I... well...” he shifts his weight to his right leg, tries to stop his hands from shaking. “I was lonely. Can I come in?”

“Well, of course. I said my suite was always open for visitations- you’re no exception.”

“That’s not what you sounded like.”

“Oh, don’t tease! It’s been a long month, Fiyero.”

He lingers by the side of her bed, leaning against the wall, eyes wandering. It’s a lovely room, really, with noteworthy trinkets that are scattered here and there. A newspaper that heavily features Glinda’s face is pasted onto the side of her shoe rack and some magazine covers are peeking out from under the textbooks piled up onto her desk. Her bedsheet is lacy and pink, like anyone would expect, and the few clothes that he can see from the half-open wardrobe door are already far too many for him to count. A hatbox sits by the foot of her bed, empty. Wrapping paper spills out of it.

And then he chances a glance to Elphaba’s side.

It’s just as she left it. A few modest books on her shelf next to her suitcase. A single pair of well-worn boots by her bed. Her sheets are the ones provided by the university, pristine and unwrinkled. Something about how little her disappearance seems to have mattered strikes a chord with him. 

Familiarity stings, and the feeling of emptiness in his chest grows just a bit more.

“You can sit down, you know,” Glinda says, cutting through his inner dialogue. “There’s a perfectly good bed here waiting for you.”

“Doesn’t it feel wrong to you?” He muses aloud, his hand ghosting the perfume bottle on her bedside table. She pauses in between prepping her pillows.

“What do you mean?”

“To just... let her be gone. We’re not even trying to help her.”

“Fiyero...” she says under her breath, half scolding, taking his hand and guiding him to sit down next to her on her bed. She eases him into the now freshly-fluffed pillows and, when she’s sure he’s comfortable, curls into him, wrapping a lithe arm around his chest, thinking of the right words to say. Still, when he takes her hand and kisses it, rolling over and falling asleep, his back to her, all the words they meant to say fall into place, forever unspoken.

(“We can’t try to find her. Our lives, the way we live them, are at risk.”

“I know.”)

•••

The Wizard makes him sleep in a separate building from Glinda now. He says that she’s a public figure, that she can’t cause a scandal. Surely he’d understand, being her partner and all. Fiyero doesn’t care. He hates it.

He hates the high and mighty attitude of the Wizard and his cohorts. Hates how they control and toy with everything behind the emerald curtains that hover over the eyes of the citizens of Oz. Maybe 5 years ago he wouldn’t have minded it at all, but then again, 5 years ago, he didn’t know Her.

He feels like he’s back in Shiz, smiling and nodding along to the old tune of propaganda and whatever pathetic attempts at an explanation he hears thrown at the people to placate them. Whenever he sees Glinda, her smile grows as wide as her eye bags are dark. It’s almost like the fame and publicity make up for the lack of real, personal interaction in her daily life- still, he insists he won’t hold it against her. 

They all need a distraction. They’ve needed one for a long, long time. What in the world could possibly be more distracting than the glaring lights of a city abuzz with rumors and cameras at every angle? 

The Press Secretary yanks at his arm one afternoon during training, snaps at him to pay attention. We can’t all be airheads, she says, and smiles when the other trainees spare her a curious side eye. She sounds familiar, that nagging voice, a harsh reminder to pay attention, that he’s meant for greater things than drifting away and dreaming, that if he slouches or frowns in public then surely he’ll be framed as a horrible, lazy man by the people. Hold your head higher! He’s a prince, but you wouldn’t know it from his conduct!

Maybe he’s projecting onto her a little too much. 

As far as she and the Wizard are concerned, he’s thinking about Her far too often- he’s distancing himself from his training. They’ll have no choice but to let him go if he doesn’t get it together soon. Those wandering eyes are hardly fit for a guard working under the Great Wizard himself, after all.

He picks his poison and buries himself in the rules, the steps, the motions. It’s like a dance, but an awfully boring one. 

He tells himself he has to train harder than all the others in the program- not that he truly has a choice either way. If he gets sent away, he’ll have nothing to return to. In the end, this is the closest he’ll ever be to King, the closest he’ll ever get to having the power to find Her, and yes, that’s how he’ll do it. He’ll rise up in the ranks and put his heart into it, like he always does. Then, and only then, can he take Glinda and leave, maybe even with Her, if she’d like, and go home.

(“Prince of Nothing,” the voice in his head nags. Is it still Madame Morrible? Or is it someone else now?)

•••

When Glinda sneaks into his room on a cold, bitter night, it feels almost too familiar. One rap at the door, a pause, and three more. 

He’s hesitant, hardly having the strength in him to move to get the door open, though it isn’t too far- the living quarters for the guards aren’t anything particularly enticing to look at. His legs and arms and stomach and, oh sweet Oz, his shoulders, are sore and stiff as a board. It takes him a minute, maybe, to decide to open the door, and another to get out of bed and do it. He finds that nowadays, time stretches itself thin.

“Glinda? What’s wrong?”

She’s shrunken again, hunched into herself, walking into his room past him and leaving him to close the door behind her. She throws the cloak she had brought with her, no doubt because she had walked from her tower of the palace down to the training grounds alone, down onto the chair sitting at his desk. It’s wet with snow. Clumsily, she toes off her shoes and sits on his bed. 

She hasn’t been so vulnerable, so tangible in years, locking herself behind smiles and festivities and kissing the heads of babies in crowds. Something tells Fiyero he won’t see her so open again, so he leans against the cheaply-made door and crosses his arms with the confidence of someone who thinks a little less hard than he does.

Glinda coughs feebly. “It’s...” Elphaba, is what his brain supplies, but she pushes past the name on the tips of both their tongues. “...Cold. In my tower. I thought maybe we could talk.”

“And that would make the cold go away?”

“Maybe it would. Oh, Fiyero, I don’t understand why you have to be so far away!”

“What?” The outburst wasn’t exactly what he was expecting when she walked in the room, but now that she had said it, he was going to push her to keep talking- well, if he could. She’s covering her mouth now, flushed red, and he can’t tell if it’s still from the cold. “Far away? But I’m right here!”

“Sure, your body is! But your heart and mind are... somewhere else!” 

(With someone else.)

“Don’t you care about what’s happening here, in the city? Can’t you come down from the clouds every now and then?”

“Glinda,” he says, moving over to sit next to her on the bed. He puts a hand over hers and curls his fingers over it, testing the waters. She doesn’t pull back, so he brings the hand up to his lips and kisses it, bringing his free hand up to hold her face. 

She squeezes her eyes shut and a single dewdrop tear rolls down a perfect, porcelain cheek. 

“Glinda, you know I love you. You’re my best friend, after all.”

Her whole body tenses when, without warning, she pulls back like a bolt of lightning suddenly ran hot through her blood. He jerks his hands away and gives her the space to breathe.

They’re quiet and perfectly still, marble and marble. Breaking the moment, she softens against the headboard of his bed, sullen eyes now looking coldly at the creaky floorboards littering the room. Fiyero doesn’t pretend to know why. Instead, he goes on.

“I’m going to become Captain of the Guard. I’ll do it for us. Then we’ll find Her, and we can all run away together! I have to focus on training, you know that. I’m... sorry, if I’ve been distant.”

“...But you do love me, right?”

“Of course! I told you, you’re my-“

“Best friend.”

“Right. I’ll do anything to make you happy.”

“Can I sleep here, then?” A refusal starts to slip out of Fiyero’s mouth, something about the Wizard and his cronies, something about punishments and banishments if they get caught, but she hasn’t finished yet. “Just hold me, and tomorrow morning I’ll be gone, back in my bedroom. The Wizard won’t suspect a thing.”

After a beat he smiles warmly, and it makes her lovely, rosy lips curl up, the slightest flash of joy alight on her face. He burns the image of that half-smile permanently into his memory, those sad eyes that he managed to turn up, even if only by an inch.

“Of course,” he says, wrapping her in his arms. He might have imagined it, but she cries into his shoulder. Not much, but just enough for him to notice that when she pulls away, his shirt is wet.

•••

Just as she promised, when he wakes up, she’s gone, the smell of rosewater lingering on his pillow. He really must sleep like the dead if he hadn’t even noticed her leaving, he thinks.

There’s a note on his desk, half crammed under a book, and he can see a kiss stamped onto the bottom next to her name. He’ll read it later. His body aches too much for him to bother moving over to get it.

Another two years, he tells himself. Then he’ll be Captain. He’ll finally find Her, and then they’ll all be happy.

At least, that’s what he hopes.

**Author's Note:**

> I write fanfiction mostly for myself, so posting it isn't particularly something I'm used to... I don't know how active I'll be, but let me know if you enjoyed!


End file.
